supplications into the ears of all the passers. They could be seen at all
hours of the day, on by-paths, in the villages, or again eating bread,
sitting in the noon heat under the shadow of some solitary tree. And the
country people began to call the beggar Old Judas.

One day he brought home in his sack two little live pigs, which a farmer
had given him after he had cured the farmer of some sickness.

Soon he stopped begging, and devoted himself entirely to his pigs. He
took them out to feed by the lake, or under isolated oaks, or in the
near-by valleys. The woman, however, went about all day begging, but she
always came back to him in the evening.

He also did not go to church, and no one ever had seen him cross himself
before the wayside crucifixes. All this gave rise to much gossip:

One night his companion was attacked by a fever and began to tremble like
a leaf in the wind. He went to the nearest town to get some medicine, and
then he shut himself up with her, and was not seen for six days.

The priest, having heard that the "Jewess" was about to die, came to
offer the consolation of his religion and administer the last sacrament.
Was she a Jewess? He did not know. But in any case, he wished to try to
save her soul.

Hardly had he knocked at the door when old Judas appeared on the
threshold, breathing hard, his eyes aflame, his long beard agitated, like
rippling water, and he hurled blasphemies in an unknown language,
extending his skinny arms in order to prevent the priest from entering.